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NASA's Kepler spacecraft is critically damaged

By Kristen Leigh PainterThe Denver Post

Posted:
05/15/2013 03:44:37 PM MDT

Updated:
05/16/2013 08:49:21 AM MDT

FILE - This file artist's rendering provided by NASA shows the Kepler space telescope. The Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four wheels that control the telescope's orientation in space, NASA said Wednesday, May 15, 2013. If engineers can't find a fix, the failure means Kepler won't be able to look for exoplanets planets outside our solar system anymore. (NASA/JPL)

NASA's Kepler spacecraft is critically damaged, threatening to prematurely end the world's most successful planet-hunting mission.

The second of four reactor wheels that point the telescope out toward its cosmic targets has stopped working. The next several months of testing and the spacecraft's future will largely be determined by a few Colorado aerospace groups and NASA.

Ball Aerospace Technologies in Boulder is Kepler's prime contractor, responsible for its design and integration. The University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP, manages Kepler's mission operations and made the discovery of its lost capability Tuesday.

Kepler, launched in 2009, has already discovered more than 2,700 potential new planets, 132 of which have been identified. The first wheel failure happened last year, but the spacecraft could still function with only three wheels.

"There is nostalgia and pride," said John Troeltzsch, Kepler program manager at Ball. "When I was a kid, there were nine planets, and that was all we knew about. ... Kepler has completely changed that."

LASP was authorized by NASA to make contact with the spacecraft twice a week for routine health checkups. When a CU student and CU faculty member contacted Kepler on Tuesday, something was wrong.

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"We discovered that it was in safe mode," said Bill Possel, LASP's director of mission operations and data systems. "We tried to recover it from safe mode, and in that process we watched that wheel start to spin and then stop. And then realized that there was an issue with that wheel."

The news came as a surprise to people close to the mission.

"It happened prematurely. Clearly we didn't design this to have the wheels fail at four years," Troeltzsch said.

As Troeltzsch explained, the wheels are the only moving parts on the spacecraft, running continuously for years, and are often the first component to give out on similar spacecraft.

While the astronomers and space agency officials are disappointed in the malfunction on the $600 million mission, they note that Kepler already completed in November its primary 3½-year mission — searching for the existence of other Earth-like planets around other stars — and was already on a two-year extended-mission phase.

The news was made public on a teleconference with members of the media Wednesday afternoon. Space agency officials were clear that they will do engineering research — which will be conducted by Ball — but recognize that its initial scientific purpose may be over.

Troeltzsch says Ball, LASP and NASA will work together to do their research and — if the wheel can't be revitalized — determine what other scientific purposes Kepler could fulfill.

"We have this exquisite, large telescope in deep space — I can't imagine (NASA) not finding a good use for it," Troeltzsch said. "Kepler in its pristine form could point as well as Hubble, but even Kepler's two wheels is (still) good."

About Kepler

Too far to rescue. In orbit around the sun, 40 million miles from Earth, Kepler is too far away to send astronauts on a repair mission as was done with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Better than ground telescopes. While ground telescopes can hunt for planets outside our solar system, Kepler is much more advanced and is the first space mission dedicated to that goal.

What's its focus? For the past four years, Kepler has focused its telescope on a faraway patch of the Milky Way hosting more than 150,000 stars, recording slight dips in brightness — a sign of a planet passing in front of the star.

The Associated Press

The primary mirror of the Kepler telescope is installed in 2007 at Ball Aerospace in Boulder. (Ball Aerospace)

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